The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Digital Video Recorders (DVRs) and other media devices enable users to record and view media content, among many other features. Typically, a DVR includes a hard disk drive or other integrated storage device on which media content items may be recorded. For example, if a user desires to record a television program for later or repeated viewings, the user may provide input to the DVR instructing the DVR to record a copy of the television program. The user may then instruct the DVR to play the recorded copy of the television program from local storage at a later time.
Many types of media content of interest to media users are episodic or series-based, where a number of related episodes of the same media content may be individually broadcast or otherwise made available to viewers over a span of months or years. For example, many television programs are broadcast as a series of separate episodes over one or possibly several seasons of episodes. As another example, a particular sports team may be associated with several broadcasted sporting events over a period of time corresponding to a sports season. If a user desires to view and/or record one episode of such a media content, often the user may also have an interest in other episodes of the same media content. However, scheduling separate recordings for each individual episode is an inconvenient task and may often result in missed recordings or other difficulties. Furthermore, each episode of a media content may be available at any given time from any of several different content sources (e.g., television broadcasts, third-party streaming content providers, Video on Demand (VOD) libraries, etc.), further making it difficult for users to readily find available episodes of particular media content of interest.